Pension Cedit Guarantee Credit - Capital

cockney_doodle_dandy

• Savings Capital:- I am 63 singlemale receiving PCGC; if I was to spend 8k GBP to replace my old car thus reducing capital by 8k GBP resulting in increased payment of PCGC would the 8k GBP be deemed notional capital or allowable expenditure?
• if deemed notional credit, would it mean in future, when I had lived off capital and had tot left 10k savings DWP would say no -you depleted your capital, now we say you have 18k (10+8notional) capital (and therefore they would not pay 100% PCGC until i had 2k savings)?

anmarj

it will depend on the SDM, most see spending on a car as a resaonable expense but I would also thought it would also depend on how old your previous car is I would suspect if your car was 1 year old and then you sold and bought another it may not be allowed, you are correct in the notinal capital but it your own capital would not nessisarly be at £2k before they would stop taking it into account, it could be longer but as the rules have change for capital it might be sooner, and although somebody may say call the Pension Service, you may be told that until you spend the money they would not be able to say until the supporting evidence was sent in and give over to the sdm.

Whiteknight

If you need to buy a replacement car just go out and get one and don't worry about how it will affect the amount of Pension Credit you get. You can then send a letter to the Pension Service advising them that your capital has decreased and that you would like then to consider this reduction in capital - you will need to send in supporting evidence to prove that the capital has gone and has not just been "hidden away" in order to get a little extra money per week.

As Anmarj has already mentioned it would be up to a specialist to decide if you have purposely deprived yourself of this money.